Doubting (Part 3)

I'm a black and white person. I don't deal well with the gray areas of life. The struggle for me is that my faith in God has to live in the gray area of my life. I struggle with this because I feel that I need to be absolutely certain, that I ought to be able to prove everything before I fully believe in God. I want some sort of sign. I'm like Thomas who said, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe" (John 20:25). I love Jesus' response to Thomas, "Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” (John 20:27). In other words, stop doubting! Have faith!

Here's the thing, we cannot see Jesus, and we cannot touch him or demand that he give a public demonstration his existence. We want these things; we want a sign; we want proof; we want some sort of confirmation, and we want to be convinced beyond any doubt that He is who he says he is. But, the only way we can truly know Jesus is through faith, and to believe in Him demands a leap of faith. This is not a leap into a dark abyss, but a leap in which we can be confident that we will be caught safely by a loving God. Martin Luther put it this way, "faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, untried, unknown goodness of God."

Faith is not certainty. Rather, “faith is basically the resolve to live our lives on the assumption that certain things are true and trustworthy, in the confident assurance that they are true and trustworthy, and that one day we will know with absolute certainty that they are true and trustworthy” (Alister McGrath). So, “Stop doubting and believe” (Matthew 20:27).